On July 22, 2019, Gavin Wood delivered a speech at the Polkadot China Tour Hangzhou Station. The main content was Polkadot's 5 milestones, Kusama network and Parathreads (Parathreads).
After a lapse of one year and three months, Polkadot has experienced many major technological advancements. The development of parallel threads mentioned for the first time in Gavin’s speech at that time is coming to an end. Kusama has also experienced major progress. The highest increase of KSM tokens has reached 70 times, and the ecological development Thousands of miles a day.
However, Gavin mentioned two key words in this speech - "nested relay chain" and "Poca Holy Grail" - which became the most eye-catching words in the speech.
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Polkadot Holy Grail and Nested Relay Chains
In his speech, Gavin mentioned five milestones in the development of Polkadot, namely Genesis, Earth, Water, Fire, and Metal.
Gavin said when referring to the last stage of Polkadot "Metal": "This stage focuses on deep expansion and will launch a 'nested relay chain', so that the DOT token of the Polkadot network is not only to ensure network security. Security Token."
Nested relay chain, what does it mean?
Gavin continued to explain that this function will allow Polkadot to expand from a cross-chain network of 100 parachains in the first phase to a parachain tree structure, thereby increasing exponentially, achieving a multi-layer parachain structure, and expanding the number to thousands Even if there are millions of parachains in the end, if the parachain architecture of each layer can reach a rate of 100,000 TPS, the entire multi-layer Polkadot network can eventually be expanded to a scalability of 1 billion TPS.
This is Polkadot's ultimate holy grail, Polkadot nested relay chains.Let's understand this passage from a different perspective.
Before the launch of the nested relay chain, the Polkadot network had only one architecture: one relay chain + 100 parallel chains. Moreover, in the early stage, these 100 parachains will not be launched at one time, but will be gradually launched in batches. The first batch of parachains to be launched is the "system parachain" serving the relay chain.
When the development of Polkadot reaches the aforementioned fourth stage, namely Fire, the Polkadot network will be high-performance.
In his speech, Gavin said that in the fourth phase of fire (Fire), the operation speed and scalability of the Polkadot network have been improved to the greatest extent possible. At this stage, the "transaction parallelization" function will be launched, which essentially uses as many CPU cores as possible when verifying blocks. And WASM Ahead of Time Compilation (WASM Ahead of Time Compilation), which allows the network to compile locally and run faster when transcoding the logic of the time structure of WebAssembly stored on the block, which must be done through a separate compiler than now Run faster.
So, how does Polkadot go from the fourth stage of fire to the fifth stage of gold? How to take the first step?
Why?
Why?
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What is the Kusama network?
To put it simply, Kusama is Polkadot's test network, the canary test network. To be more complicated and more accurate, you have to refer to the introduction of Polkadot Lightpaper (Polkadot White Paper).
According to Polkadot Lightpaper, Kusama Network is an early, unaudited and unmodified early version of Polkadot, with the purpose of testing Polkadot's network technology and economic incentive policies in the real world. It is also the best testing ground for parachain developers before deploying their functionality to Polkadot.
For Kusama Network, there is an impressive note in the white paper, "Play with chaos on Kusama, Polkadot's wild cousin", translated into Chinese means "Play with chaos on Kusama Network, Polkadot's wild cousin".
All in all, Kusama is Polkadot's most rudimentary, unaudited, but exactly the same testnet as Polkadot.
So, what does Kusama Network have to do with Polkadot's ultimate holy grail "nested relay chain"?
Let's turn our perspective back to Gavin's speech at the Polkadot China Tour in 2019.
In his speech, Gavin said, "The purpose of Kusama we launched is to test those parts that we don't know. That is to say, Kusama is an unpretentious, real, and pre-provided test network with actual economic value. For To ensure the authenticity of this test network, we must inject corresponding economic value into this test network, so that testers participating in the test and network initiators can do the test seriously.”
And, "We hope that the Kusama test network can continue to exist. Even after the test work is completed, it will still exist as an independent blockchain network after the main network goes online.", and no one has the authority to shut it down except for major attacks. Kusama Network.
Therefore, we have seen a very interesting phenomenon, that is, as a test network, Kusama will continue to run and will not be shut down unless it encounters an irresistible attack force. And with the development of Polkadot technology, Kusama will continue to upgrade the network, which is very different from the conventional blockchain test network. For example, after the EOS main network goes online, the test network will be shut down. After ETH2.0 goes online in the future, Numerous ETH testnets will also be shut down.
The question then arises, what will Kusama Network become if it continues to evolve?
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Kusama, taking the first step towards the Holy Grail of Polkadot
For the Holy Grail of Polkadot, the nested relay chain, there are at least three distinctive features.
First of all, Polkadot's ultimate architecture "nested relay chain", that is, thousands of relay chains are linked together through "bridges", and each relay chain has 100 parallel chains. Secondly, Kusama is Polkadot's test network and will not be shut down, and the technology will improve with the progress of Polkadot. Finally, according to Gavin's statement, Kusama will eventually link with Polkadot through the bridge.
Therefore, I would naturally think: Kusama is likely to become Polkadot's "first choice", or natural order, when developing the second relay chain after the first relay chain is fully functional.Why do you think so?
Because Gavin has publicly stated that a transfer bridge will be established between the Kusama network and the real main network of Polkadot in the future.
Let’s turn our perspective back to Gavin’s speech. Gavin said:
"A transfer bridge will be established between the Kusama network and the real main network of Polkadot in the future, so that the parallel chains in the Kusama network can be linked with the parallel chains on the Polkadot network, and Kusama's tokens can also be cross-chained with Polkadot's DOT tokens. In terms of the ultimate goal, the entire Kusama network will also be a network managed and promoted by the community, and will operate in parallel with the Polkadot main network.”
Not only that, the current development progress of the Kusama network has even surpassed Polkadot. For example, Gavin said at the recent Polkadot China Tour Beijing Station that the parachain will be launched first on Kusama.
To sum up, Kusama will be linked with the Polkadot main network, and the development progress is even higher than that of the Polkadot network, so it becomes the best choice for Polkadot to expand the second relay chain. Of course, re-development of a new relay chain is not ruled out, but choosing Kusama directly is the most trouble-free and fastest way.
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How will this affect the Kusama network?
Teacher Cao Yin once wrote the article "Why did I buy KSM again after I got off the car for 3 dollars?" Talking about what exactly is KSM” stated that Kusama is a more community-based Polkadot mainnet.
When talking about the importance of Kusama, Cao Yin expressed it like this, "So it can be said that Kusama is a more community-oriented Polkadot mainnet, he is not the shadow of Polkadot, just like yfii is a more community-oriented and fairer yfi , most people in the community don’t realize that.”
He also emphasized that "maybe even Gavin didn't realize the true value of Kusama".
As for the price of KSM, he also made no secret of his opinion, "With the news of the kusama parachain auction coming out in the future, the reasonable value of kusama should be one-fifth or even one-third of Polkadot. Therefore, I It will continue to increase kusama until KSM reaches one-third of Polkadot's market value."
In addition, the existence of Kusama can actually make the Polkadot network more fair.
We know that during the parachain auction process, the phenomenon of "big investors" is likely to appear. For example, an institutional investor controls slot resources by holding a large amount of DOT. At this time, the project party may be "coerced" to "cooperate" , such as the acquisition of tokens at a low price, which may hinder the development of the project.
At this time, the options available to the project party include becoming a parathread to run for a parachain on Kusama. Therefore, the existence of Kusama also promotes the development of the Polkadot network in a more fair direction in a certain sense.
To sum up, Kusama is not only the "wild cousin" of the Polkadot network, but also the first step for the Polkadot network to find the Holy Grail. In the future, with the launch of the Kusama parachain, what role will it play? We will wait and see.
